Enterprise business applications often make use of business objects to represent entities or concepts in a particular business application. Business objects may be associated with classes, which define the structure and (at least to some degree) intended meaning (i.e., business semantics) of a homogenous set of real-world entities. Business object classes can be related to other classes via associations, which generally state a semantic dependency. One example of such semantic dependency would be the relationship between a customer and its purchase orders. As such, business object instances may represent individual business entities that are manipulated by business processes.
Business object classes, as well as certain changes in the state of business objects, may be defined at the design time associated with the class of business objects or the design time of other system parameters. It is not always practical, efficient, or desirable for classes, event types, changes in state, or other characteristics of business objects to be defined at design times.